Impact of international conferences

Over the last few decades, the preparation of global conferences has prompted unprecedented co-operation between inter-governmental, governmental and non-governmental organisations worldwide. Additional activities around the conferences have provided an important platform for the concerns of deprived communities to be voiced. This has had a considerable influence on changing perceptions and shaping the analysis of issues from a people-centred, human rights-based perspective.

The adoption of a number of international policy commitments and declarations on water issues represents global consensus on agreed priorities. These policy commitments provide a basis for holding governments politically accountable for their action and inaction, even though the commitments have not yet been turned into legal commitments enforceable in a court of law. At the same time, the right to water is being increasingly relied upon as a policy imperative by water development organisations and NGOs throughout the world.

The most recent of these global conferences was the 4th World Water Forum held in Mexico City in 2006, which provided a critical forum for advocating water as a human right.

The evolution of policy evidenced in these conferences has played a key role in contributing to the recognition of the right to water as an independent human right which is capable of legal enforcement. Despite this progress at the level of policy commitment, more than a billion people worldwide remain without adequate access to clean water. Urgent attention needs to be given to ensuring the practical implementation of the commitments made at these conferences.

For more information on the Evolution of Policy Commitments, click here.

Impact of the Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals have helped transform the framework for global development. As a set of measurable, shared objectives endorsed by all Member States, they have provided an unprecedented basis for partnership between developed and developing countries and have been embraced by other intergovernmental bodies, including the African Union and the Group of Eight. They have also allowed the United Nations system, the Bretton Woods financial institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and other development partners to align their work around a common framework and to improve the coherence and effectiveness of all their efforts at country level. The United Nations has launched: The Millennium Development Goals campaign to spread awareness and build global support for the Goals A process of national reporting on progress towards the Goals, and The Millennium Project, which draws together hundreds of policy makers, practitioners and experts from across a wide range of institutions and countries to research how progress can be accelerated and sustained Source: Millennium Development Goals Fact sheet, UN.

Click here for further information on the impact of policy commitments on people without access to water.